The Witches’ Kitchen

by Cecelia Holland

  Silent. Not screaming now. Using all their strength to chase him. Raef used all his strength to flee, stretching his legs long as deer legs, his arms pumping like wings, his eyes picking out his course on the stubbly slick ground before him. He dodged around a slick salt-rimed pool of water and bounded over a chunk of driftwood bristling with roots.

  The boulder loomed up before him like a great gray skull. His feet sank into loose sand and he struggled to keep running, heaving himself up against the drag of the slipping sand. Just past the boulder he wheeled around, gasping for breath.

  Conn was a few strides behind him, dashing across the meadow. The other boy, far ahead of his friends, had almost caught him. In the shadow of the boulder, Conn whirled around, and the boy chasing them leapt on him.

  Raef yelled. He thought of the boat again and half turned, wanting to go to the boat, and then swung back to see Conn and the other boy gripped in each other’s arms, straining together, their faces inches apart. The other boy’s gang was streaking in across the meadow, and now they began to shout again, triumphant.

  Conn planted his feet. Raef could see the muscles of his back bunch together; he felt all through his own arms his cousin’s arms flex and heave, and then Conn lifted the other boy up off the ground.

  The jubilant wails of the gang cut off. The running boys slowed and stopped, a respectful distance back. Conn lifted the long-jawed boy up in the air and flung him down, and every one of the other boys bounded back a step.

  Conn spun around and charged past the boulder, out onto the beach; he caught up with Raef and slid to a stop and twisted around to look back at the other boys. “He’s not dead,” he said, disappointed. “He’s not even hurt.”

  Raef had swept his first glance down at the beach, to the boat, rocking gently on the waves at the end of its painter; the tide had come in. The tight panic went out of his belly. He glanced back at the meadow, where the other boys were running off, as if getting away as fast as possible would make everything better. In their midst the long-jawed boy ran as nimbly as ever, unhurt.

  “You beat him, though,” Raef said. He thumped Conn on the shoulder. “I’ve never seen you do that before.”

  “He isn’t as heavy as you are,” Conn said. “But it didn’t even hurt him.”

  Raef made a sound in his throat. He was glad nobody was hurt. “Do you think Corban will find out?”

  Conn laughed. “They won’t tell anybody, I think.” He spat, smiling, and stretched his arms. “I’m not telling.” Sitting down, he took one of his feet in his hands to worry a thorn out.

  No, Raef thought. None of us will tell anybody.

  He stood there on the dune, looking out the sea, with the salt wind rising in his face. He remembered the boys playing at their game, kicking the thing around on the ground. He remembered the longing to run out there and join them.

  They would have driven him away, or worse, fallen on him and beaten him, in spite of Conn. He felt suddenly, unbearably separate, alone, outside, as if everything happened in front of him, and he could only watch. As if he and Corban’s whole family lived not in the world at all, but in some magic space, which Benna’s pictures made, and that was why they could not join the other boys’ game.

  Then out on the glinting sea, out past the barely visible edge of the southern island, he saw something red.

  He yelled. Beside him, Conn jumped, startled. Raef laughed, pointing. “Look! See there—”

  Conn squinted, thrusting his head out, and shaded his eyes with his hand.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “I do—” Raef clapped his hands, laughing. “That’s a sail— it’s the ship!” He plunged away down the dune. “It’s Ulf’s ship!”

  Conn let out a whoop. “Let’s go meet them.”

  “No—the wind’s dead foul—let’s go tell Uncle.” Raef reached out, trying to catch Conn’s arm and hold him. Conn was already halfway down the dune. Raef groaned. They would have to row the whole way. He turned and looked back into the meadow, where the last of the other boys had disappeared.

  Conn yelled for him. He went obediently down and waded out after his cousin, to the hide boat.

  The water of the bay was a sleek and glinting surface, the sky a soft blue depth. She drew the line of the trees and the earth between them, the trees feathery, close, manifold, upright against the line of the marshes, flat and low, spiky with reeds. Beyond the trees she drew the tall smoke of the village there.

  She lowered her hand with the brush and looked at what she had made. The column of smoke reminded her of a church steeple, and in a rush the memory swept over her, of looking across the river toward Jorvik, and the steeple of the church on the hill there.

  The strokes of the bell that called people to prayer. She shut her eyes, drowning in memory.

  “Mama, look.”

  She opened her eyes and turned her head; Aelfu had gathered white stones in her basket and was setting them down in rows on the flat ground of the yard. Benna put her hand down beside her, on the other child lying there asleep, warm and soft under her hand. “Aelfu,” she said, “what beautiful stones. What are you making?”

  “A picture,” Aelfu said.

  “A picture of what?”

  Crouched over her stones, her hair in dirty wisps around her lowered head, the child shrugged up and down. “Just a picture.”

  Benna looked down at her hands. Her drawing was on a bit of stiff dried deerskin. She held it out, frowning, and moved her gaze from it to the real smoke, the real trees. Just a picture. She laid the hide down again before her and used the edge of the brush to make the trees leafier.

  Much nearer, on this side of the water, a flock of gulls prowled and squawked over the edge of the meadow, where the family dumped their garbage. Abruptly now they whirled up into the air, a vortex of wings, and through them she saw Corban coming, walking up from the beach, a string of fish in his hand. He walked straight through the screeching fluttering gulls, driving them up and away, and they spun around him, drawn back by the fish dangling from his hand. Surrounded by the wild noisy birds, he came striding up the trampled grass toward her.

  She was up before she knew it, and walking toward him. The gulls flew up and away and she went into his arms. They stood together a while, their arms around one another. Benna laid her head on his chest. Aelfu called out to him and he started over to look at what she made, and Benna went back to her place by Miru.

  He took the fish inside. She could hear him in there stamping around, and when he came out he was carrying a sack in one hand. He sat down next to her and dumped the sack down. Inside it, she knew, were clamshells, which the boys had brought yesterday; they clicked and tocked together in the sack.

  “Let me see,” he said.

  She showed him the picture, and he did what she had done, looked from the deerskin to the far shore, and the smoke. He said, “The water doesn’t look right.”

  “I’m not done with it,” she said. “I wonder how I could make colors.”

  “You could use berries.”

  “That color fades.”

  “I thought you didn’t care about keeping them.”

  She said nothing, but took the deerskin back and reached for her brush. It wasn’t to keep them, but to make them better. She didn’t have to explain to him. He accepted what she did with few questions; he understood it sometimes better than she did. Beside her he sat picking fish scales off his sleeves. The seagulls had settled back down on the bank, a white scud along the green of the meadow. He smelled of the warm sun and the shore where he had stood fishing, the dried salt seaweed beach smell.

  Presently he said, “The boys have not brought the boat back yet.”

  “Did you think they would? You said they could have it all day.”

  “I’ll take the log. I want to go over to the mainland.”

  “Wait for them, and they can go, too.” She stroked the brush over the water. The log boat seemed dangerous to her.

  �
��No, the log will do fine.” He stroked his hand down her back. “I’ll bring you something.”

  “Not more berries,” she said. “We have too many, they’re molding.” She lifted her face and he kissed her. Aelfu was setting stones on stones. She leaned her face against her husband’s, smelling his salty, sandy skin. He kissed her again, then swung the sack over his shoulder and went away down toward the cove, where he kept his boats; she took the deerskin on her knee and drew the water of that stretch of the bay flat and calm, to keep him safe. But everywhere else, she drew whirlpools.

  The log was a boat made of a single tree, the inside burnt hollow, the ends shaped with an axe. Corban had found it some time before, beached on the island’s south side; he had patched it and carved some wooden paddles for it. Probably it had once belonged to one of Tisconum’s people, who paddled around in similar boats, most of them bigger than this one. Tisconum had shown no interest in it, and no one had ever claimed it from Corban, so he kept it. It was cumbersome and leaked, and he used it mostly around the shores of the island. Now he threw the sack of clamshells into it and ran it out into the water. Getting in was always touchy, and he settled himself cautiously down in the stem and set off paddling.

  The afternoon was turning hot; he could feel the coming of a thunderstorm, like a tingling in the air, and he kept his eyes on the far shore and worked hard with the paddle. He had waited until slack tide, when the strait was calmer, but the water was always tricky through these narrows, choppy under the wind. As he paddled he kept an eye out for his son and his nephew but saw nothing of them.

  When the new ship was done, he would give them the old hide boat. Then he supposed they would make off with the new ship whenever they could. He meant that not to be very often.

  The log boat was stiff and grudging in the water, but still he liked the work. The flat waters of the bay spread out around him, murmuring past the boat, and the paddle made silvery curlicues of bubbles in the dark green water. As he drew away from the loom of the island the farther shores appeared, hazy with mist and distance, the whole broad stretch of land and water smiling under the summer sun. His heart rose. He loved this place; he had from the first time he saw it, when in Ulf’s ship they came searching for a safe harbor.

  When they sailed into this bay, that long-ago time, it had been a day such as this one, not so hot, at the end rather than the beginning of the summer. At first Ulf had wanted to keep looking, because all along the shore the smokes rose of campfires, but Corban had known that if other people lived here, then he and his wife and sister and her baby could make a home here also, and he told Ulf to take them in and put them ashore on the big island.

  On the tree-covered slopes they had found old campfires and the tracks of people, but no one was living there at that time, and so Corban settled his family on the island, and he had never regretted it. The waters around them were full of fish all year, and birds nested in the trees, and deer came across the narrow strait; they could gather wild fruit and herbs and mushrooms, eggs in the spring, and they found fresh water in ponds among the rocks. Up on the height of the island, something like hemp grew in sweeping fields, and every fall they harvested sheaves of it and made rope and nets from the fibers, and Benna talked about building a loom, but never did.

  He loved such talk of what they might do, which seemed like a road ahead of him into days to come; he thought they would live here forever.

  Before him, against the dark hedge of the trees, the pale shore curved out into a point and then arched away, through marsh and sandbars, to the south. Off beyond the ragged tops of the pine trees, the freshening wind was dragging the top of the plume of smoke across the sky. That was Tisconum’s village, on the bank of the river a short way up from the bay. Just off the point the water broke into a rough chop; he drove the boat through it, leaning against the sudden rock and lurch, and lumbered into the quieter water beyond.

  In the marsh that fringed the coast some women were stooped, gathering rushes. When Corban approached they popped straight up and stared at him. The front of the log crunched on the shore, and he swung out and dragged it up onto the land. The women watched him steadily, but he ignored them, picked up the sack of shells, and walked away through the marsh grass toward the higher ground beyond. Behind him, he heard the sudden babble of their voices. He followed their own path back across the marsh, where the white lips of old dead clamshells stuck up in clumps from the black muck, and dragonflies buzzed zigzag past him.

  Where the marsh climbed up to the pine woods, he came into a cloud of biting flies and broke into a hard run to get away from them, keeping his head down. The path wound through the shadowy dark under the trees and crossed the little stream that fed the marsh, where fat smelly green leaves poked up from the rot, and birds fluttered away from him up into the branches. Beyond the stream the ground rose a little, drier. Tangles of vines swarmed up the trunks of the trees. The trail was wider here. He followed it up through the trees to the edge of the clearing where Tisconum’s village stood.

  There he stopped. He seldom came closer than this. Before him lay strips of gardens, the green studded with yellow blossoms and tangles of beans. Beyond, the first buildings rose, round as oven domes, sheathed in pine boughs. He could hear people yelling, somewhere, and beyond the first house he caught a glimpse of someone running—he guessed they were children playing. After a while, when he thought someone must have seen him here, he went back into the forest and followed another, fainter trail to a clearing by a pocked gray rock, taller than he was.

  There he sat down, the sack by his knee, and waited, and presently Tisconum came in from another direction and sat down before him.

  They were silent a while, neither moving, not even looking at each other, until Tisconum opened the pouch he carried on his belt and took out a carved wooden pipe and a clump of dried leaves, and gave himself to the task of breaking up bits of the leaves and stuffing them into the pipe.

  Corban brought out his tinderbox. When Tisconum had the pipe packed, he held it out, and Corban struck sparks into the tinder in the box and blew them into a little flame and lit the pipe. Tisconum offered the pipe first to Corban, who shook his head and waved it back. All this was the way it always happened.

  Tisconum sucked on the pipe for a while, trailing the fragrant smoke through his nostrils. Finally he turned and handed the pipe to Corban, who took it this time, and inhaled of it also. The strong smoke roughened his throat and made his head feel momentarily swollen. Taking the pipe back, Tisconum laid it aside. From the pouch he brought four fox furs and set them down before Corban.

  The first time they had met, in these same woods, Corban had been hunting and, with a big gobbler-bird over his shoulder, was going back to his boat, when suddenly through the thin sunlit trees he saw Tisconum standing on the path watching him.

  He had stopped in his tracks, his hackles rising. A few times, some of the local people had shouted at him, and thrown things. They stayed off the island, but he was wary of them. But Tisconum made no move, nor spoke, only watched him, and when Corban watched him back, their eyes met, even across the distance, and through the trees.

  Corban lifted the bird from his shoulder, laid it down on the path, and backed away. With his hand he offered it to the man in the trees before him.

  That man’s eyes widened. For a while he only stood there, staring at Corban, but at last he came up along the path. Corban began to back away a little, keeping a distance between them. The other man was tall and lean, with dark hair and eyes and skin, dark as if burnt. He wore clothes of hide; Corban then still had his woolen shirt from Hedeby, his Danish boots. The other man bent over the gobbler-bird, took out his knife, and cut one wing from the bird. He straightened and nodded his head to Corban, then, taking the wing, went away into the woods, moving quick and neat as a deer through the brush. Corban picked up the rest of the bird and went home.

  Then a little while later he was hunting in the marsh on the shore opposite his
island, and the tall burnt-skinned man came up to him, as if they were long neighbors. They sat down together and the red man showed him how to smoke the pipe, laughing when he choked and coughed, and then gave him a pouch made of squirrel fur. Corban had nothing to give in return, as he had just begun hunting, but the other man—this was when he learned his name was Tisconum—insisted that he take the pouch, smiling, looking pleased.

  After that they began to meet often. Corban had always kept his family apart from the local people, but he saw good in this with Tisconum, especially now that his boys were getting bigger and going all around the bay.

  Every time they met, Tisconum had something for him, a fur, or a sack of herbs, but in the beginning Corban had nothing he thought worthy. Then by accident he found that Tisconum liked the shells of the clams the boys dug up out of the muck at the bottom of the bay. Corban had been using a shell for a scraper, and it fell out of his pouch, and he saw, surprised, how the red man’s eyes followed it covetously. After that, he brought Tisconum all the shells the boys gathered.

  This worked out very well. Tisconum traded him a steady supply of interesting things, like these three black fox furs, and seeds, which Benna had made grow in her garden. Now Tisconum took a box made of birch bark from his pouch and held it out with a little flourish. He knew Corban loved the sweet thickened sap. Corban took it gladly.

  He said, “My wife will thank you also, Tisconum.”